#144: At Death's Door

Sacred symbols, a PlayStation podcast is brought to you by, well, you. If you want to learn how to support our show, go to patreon.com slash last and media. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to the Sacred symbols, a PlayStation podcast.

This is episode 144. My name is Colin Worry. I'm joined as always by Chris Ragan, Chris. How are you today?

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. It's another it's another day in indoors. It's a good day in Seattle.

Delcey playing delceyro. Yeah. I decided to embrace I was Googling beanie characters, of which there are very many, actually, Amanda Spinelli from recess comes to mind. Delceyro, obviously famous famous iconic.

Yeah, iconic video character, Delceyro. I don't know. I just I'm liking the beanie, man. Like it feels kind of nice to not have to worry about how good your hair looks.

That's great. I mean, you look great. It's awesome. You have the nuclear phone behind you, the nuclear telephone and going to call up Soviet leaders to make sure everything's on the up and up, which is good.

Yeah, you know, happy about that. We're recording the Sunday before. So you never know what important calls might come through there. You know, I know, I can imagine like everything has to shut down everywhere.

Everyone has to understand the state is ruined everybody. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, it is. It is kind of lame.

Also joining us today, as usual is executive producer of Last Amedia Dustin Furman Dustin. Good to see you wearing one of Super Mario Brothers three yellow box art and yes shirt, which I like. It was way overpriced. I feel like an idiot for buying it, but I was getting the pin set for free.

I was like now at the time because I'm paying for shipping, but it was like a $30 shirt, which just felt heinous. I mean, I will allow Mario to, you know, abuse me. I mean, he's dead now actually as of as of today's no longer alive. He was removed from the store kicked out of the building and promptly shot on site.

He's gone. Yeah, they got him at the got him at the toll booth. Riddle. I actually got me because I bought that collection on Switch.

Nice. Like the last day, I was like, ah, fuck it. Sons of bitches. And then I bought it because I like to, I love some more.

I was like, I was like sunshine. I have a soft spot for as well, but it's good to have you here with us. Dustin, thank you for joining us, taking time out of your busy day, being a twitch streamer with a nice little setup. Oh, I do, you know, I always never know whether the lights are cooler land, but I think they're cool.

So I'm going to look great. I mean, I'm just in my office. Nothing really changes. Oh, you know what I do have you.

this won't be very fun for the audio listeners. That's too bad. I have the first copies of a Habroxia. Oh, and a PS4 right here.

Oh, look at that. So there they are. Isn't that nice? Isn't that fun?

So if you ordered her Broxia to our newest game, Lilymose, newest game that I wrote on PS Vita or PS4 physically, they're going out now. People are getting them. So thank you for your support. If you didn't get them, have fun buying them on eBay.

I fucking tried to warn you that night. I did. I tried to warn you. All right.

Sacred symbols. Are we PlayStation podcasts? Oh, we don't get to get them. I'm just, we got to keep it close.

We got to know. Right. I know. We got that.

Very close. We got there. But Sacred symbols is our weekly PlayStation podcast. Last day media is our podcast empire.

Of course, you can support us over on patreon.com slash last media like more than 10,000 of you do doing so. Gets you early access to this show as well as our Xbox podcast, Defining Duke, which is very popular, Mr. Matty plays and Carrick slash ACG slash Jeremy. I don't, I can't with all the names that he goes by.

It's difficult for me to keep up with it. I have to kind of when someone says, you know, it's like, Oh, Jeremy, you know, I'm like, Oh, Carrick. Oh, ACG. It's happened to us.

Colin, a few times. Yeah, it's the Trinity. He's like the Trinity. When defining Duke started your life, you said something, Jeremy.

Like who the fuck is Jeremy? Because I've never referred him as Jeremy. And that's like, well, because I send him his money and checks. And obviously I'm not going to send them to, you know, what is angry, sent to our gaming.

I don't think that that's going to cash. Maybe that's his business name and what cash, but maybe, but unless they're doing a great job over there. So you get early access to that. Of course, you also got access to my brother.

My brother's knockback podcast that I do with him, which I'm kind of considering his show. He's the star of the show. We do a retro nostalgia podcast every week. And we do a couple of weekly patriotic exclusive shows, including Sacred symbols plus, which is for PlayStation, defining Duke Ultimate, which is for Xbox and Sacred symbols plus is kind of turning right now into an interview show is I kind of run through a list of people I want to talk to last week's conversation very popular with Nick Calandra, the editor and chief of the escapist.

I instructed Dustin. Well, I'm struck that I threw it out there because what I like to do is I like to float ideas to Dustin and then make him think that he came up with the idea. So what I said was, Hey, Dustin, I send him an email and I'm like, Hey, Dustin, what do you know, I think we should, you know, or what do you think about making that episode free for everyone? And then and then Dustin's going to be like, Oh, we should make that episode free for everyone.

I'm like, you can take credit for that, Dustin. I set that little seat for you. So I think we will make that episode free. It was all about games media and the future of games media.

Too long ago, actually, to talk about some other things, but I sent him this email. And I wanted to, so I wanted to do an episode with him about certain thing, like legality is going on right now in the industry. So we're going to talk about CD projects and their legal liability for cyberpunk. We're going to talk about defamation and libel in terms of Troy Levitt at Avalanche and other the famitory things that have happened around the industry, such as what happened to Nolan Bushnell and all that shit a couple years ago.

And then we're going to talk about corporate consolidation. So like all these companies buying each other, we're going to talk about that a little while then we're going to talk about licensing in light of the news. We're going to talk about a little while with PlayStation three and be going offline. We're going to talk about like what it is you buy when you get a license and what our expectations should be about access to those licenses.

So that's going to be an awesome episode. If you're a nerd, like I am and a lot of our audiences. So thank you so much for that. That's what now before I move on, I did want to talk quickly about a correction that we had from the audience.

Tyler shots right into us. He said quick correction from last week's episode, which I believe was also discussed on the episode before. He's right. He says Call of Duty League is played on PC with controller not on PlayStation consoles.

So I look this up because we mentioned that, you know, Sony, like kind of has a buying with the call of duty league, Activision laid off a bunch of people from that there's some sort of effect. And like, where did I get this idea from that the game ran on PlayStation? So I looked it up. Well, starting this year, it's running on PC, but when it was founded, 2019, played on standard PlayStation 4 consoles, called duty monitor.

So I knew I didn't make that up completely, but you're right. That isn't true anymore. So I wanted to throw that out there. Yeah, I wouldn't have known that at all.

Yeah, that's one correct the record. We also have to correct the record about something else. I want to throw it over to Dustin for this one. So we have a great merch store.

It's doing awesome. Last day, a media dot shop. It's made manufactured in America, made America, shipped in America and all that, except for we found out one thing about one product from one user. And so we wanted to shine light on this to better represent the products.

So Dustin, you want to kick in on this? Right. Yeah, it came to our attention that the so most of our shirts, there's two options. There's like a normal and there's a premium.

The normal shirts are made in India, like there's a tag on side that says made in India, but we got a lot of clarification about what that means and that specifically, like the shirt was designed the as far as like the dimensions and the cut and stuff like that. And it specifically was sourced and made for our merch provider. So and that's really just a way that they can offer a shirt for a lower price than the premium shirt. So we want to be upfront with that to the audience that that is out there just because we've been handling the main America aspect is still based on like legal definitions manufactured because it's like they manufacture the shirt.

They source the clothing for that specific product from India. But we were he told us about the relationship he has with this particular company that it's all a union labor, which is ironic because we talk about union stuff here in a different light, but I don't know what union labor necessarily means in India, but we're it's not just like a slave labor Chinese that we've talked about in the past. He has a very specific relationship with the guy that owns this factory. He said it's like all women that run and cut and sew and make these products.

So we wanted to be clear and upfront about that just because that was new information that was brought to our attention. Was that clear? Yeah. Well, I guess that's kind of what I want from the audience.

You know, I don't want to say my Patreon, but you just tweeted us or whatever tweet it last day media or whatever because I was thinking about this. I'm like, okay, everything else is totally made America on the store, right, including the premium shirts, sweatshirts, everything that masks the stickers, everything. Yeah. Except for this.

And I was like, okay, well, we weren't aware of this. We could easily just remove this from the store. That's an option. And it probably wouldn't affect most customers, but it does remove the lower cost option for people that are more cost constrained.

And so I guess what I want to do is kind of get as long as it's fair trade, which it is, that's kind of the most important thing. I prefer to be domestic completely. That's important to me. So the audience can let us know because we can easily take this shirt down or wait for there to be an all American solution until we offer a lower priced t-shirt option.

But it was important for us to kind of bring that to our attention because we've sold a lot of merch like a lot and one person has brought this up so far. But when it was brought up, we were like, oh, well, we didn't really understand that. So then we investigated what that meant and we needed to really wear it to the audience. So we're at last, media.shop.

We're super happy with the quality of the merch and all that people are really digging it. But if made in America is kind of like really important to you, like it is to me, then you might just want to avoid that one product. And if we find out anything is kind of, you know, not like we make fun of China all the time, but we don't want, we don't want to, it's impossible to not participate in a global trade market that takes advantage of ill paid labor. It's not possible unless you live totally off the grid and you like source your, your electronics in some weird way and all that.

So I'm not saying that we would ever want to do that, but in ways that we can reasonably control, we want to be able to contribute to a more equitable outcome for our own country's workforce. And we certainly want to do it while helping the underpaid and under labored, under paid labor, rather in countries that don't treat their people very well. So that's what's important. So give us feedback, but we wanted to say that at the time.

Let me throw this one over to you, Chris, Alex Bolton wrote in this. Say, good evening, gentlemen. How are we all doing now that we've been in this pandemic lockdown for over a year? Just a little gut check as I feel that time has just flown by for me.

So much has happened in my life during all this. Yet it feels like a total blink of an eye. God bless. I mean, we've talked about this many times, Chris, the sort of time vortex.

But I'm wondering, I'm feeling pretty optimistic right now, actually, I'm feeling like things are getting better here in Virginia. Things are pretty normal. I mean, obviously people are still getting sick. People are still dying.

We don't want that to be the new normal. But shit, I mean, I was talking to Michael when I was reading the news last night and unfortunately, we have so many European listeners. Shit's going off in Europe. Like it's totally different there right now.

It's really bad, except for in England. I think they're doing pretty well in other places, Poland, maybe. But here in the US, at least in Virginia, in the Mid-South, it's pretty normal. So I'm feeling pretty good.

How are you feeling now? Yeah, I mean, the issue with America is it's just so huge, you know, like, there could be, there could be like millions of people doing fine and still like it wouldn't even, it would even make a dent into like what the broader population could be, could be going through. But I don't know. Because these vaccines are kind of starting to be more reliably administered, even though they're not technically actually vaccines, they're not FDA-approved because there's not enough time for the FDA to approve it.

It's more like a flu shot from what I'm hearing. I don't know. Like I tend to stay in the realm of like, you know, and I'm just going to expect the worst to hope for the best. So that way, like, you know, I can be pleasantly surprised if things ever go back to normal or if things are still the worst, I can at least be like, yeah, you know, I was right.

It's kind of how I look at it. Gotta find some kernel of some silver lining, you know, you get that smoke satisfaction. Yeah. You were right.

Unfortunately. Sander, right. Yeah. No, I totally understand what you're saying.

I mean, I think that my lifestyle, it was so unaffected by this, like profoundly unaffected by this, actually that it's easy for me to also kind of like the hill was like a little smaller from you. It was like a nipple, let's say, like a big mountain. You know, I was like, oh, a little nipple. Yeah.

It wasn't like, it wasn't that different for me, but doesn't have any feeling what's your mental fortitude? What's your state right now, your constitution? So I actually, it's funny. I was talking about this with my parents are here for Easter this weekend, which is awesome.

So we've been hanging out. But I wanted to toss this to Chris too, because Chris and I are the same age. And I think that, you know, your age is a big factor on how this pandemic has affected you and it's different, not necessarily better or worse. Like if you were a senior in high school in March 2020, that is a huge, huge impact.

So I don't take this as me trying to diminish another. I'm just my own perspective. Feel like being 27 has been an odd age for this to happen because 27 is like solid late twenties. And it's like this kind of transition where it's like, okay, the, I mean, Chris and I, we've been adults for a while now, right?

But we're no longer new adults. We're no longer mid twenties. We are late twenties and life has a bit of a different quality to it, to me. And it's not necessarily good or bad.

It's just the things that were the dilation of time is starting to feel very weird, especially with with COVID, things that are that feel like a year ago were actually five years ago. And no, you weren't, you weren't, it feels like you were, you know, 19 or 20 just recently, but it's not, you were 19 or 27 or eight years ago. So it's not necessarily, I think they said, Chris, can you relate to this one? I'm saying no, totally.

I feel like 21 was like a few weeks ago, you know, like sincerely, like, and I think that's largely, honestly, in my situation, it's kind of exemplified just because, you know, I got them out of my parents house, like really, really like at 21. And I found pretty, I don't want to say immediate success, but I was able to like, kind of live on my own comfortably, like a lot earlier than a lot of people. So my life has been like basically the same since I was 21. And maybe like when I was 21 or 22, I was living more of a 27 year old existence than I thought I was, but you know what I mean?

Like this disability and just like the fact that's like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm actually comfortable. Well, it's like a lot of people around me are like, you know, I got college debt. I got like this. And it's like, oh shit, you know, so it's, it's a very weird kind of feeling.

But yeah, I'm at that point where it's like, oh man, like I should, I got to start thinking like, like I'm going to be old soon. You know, I got to say, I can't be thinking about the shit that I was thinking about when I was 22, you know, right? And I know I can already, I can feel your comment right now saying like, 27, you're still young. It's like, that's not the point.

The point is not I'm saying, oh, Chris and I are old now. It's just, you know, I think it's a very real phenomenon. The older you get your, your dilation of time because you've been alive longer is different. And so with COVID, you know, a year that has been mostly spent not going out and creating major memories really has a weird flavor to all that all at once.

So I think 26 is like firmly in, in the area where like you're kind of okay to still be kind of dicking around. But like the fact that 20, the fact that that final year of like your mid 20s is just gone. And now you've just kind of been fast forwarded into the point where you're like, you're going to be 30 soon. You know, it's really like, as far as I'm concerned, I've, I'm still 26 at this point because I didn't get my 26.

So that's how I'm living. I don't care. I'm probably going to, I'm probably going to live a long time, which sucks. But you know, whatever, I'll be all right.

Pretty uplifting conversation. That was just a card here. And I was saying, I don't want to be like 90 years old and like walk around on like a half spider, but actually that sounds awesome. Like a half spider ball or something like that.

Well, I mean, I had a conversation with Chris not too long ago. We had like a personal kind of back and forth that we sometimes do. And one piece of advice I gave to Chris was just that he's so, and I feel like I've got Dustin too, although Dustin has had the advantage of not being in California and thus being able to plant roots and kind of make the pot. What I would look at is positive and wise moves to get done as quickly as possible.

And what I was saying to Chris was he's in such a great and fortuitous position in his life that he should forego the, let's say the, the carnal pleasures of California and just plant roots in New York and buy a house and just save money and pay off the property and have no debt at all. And like by the time you, I was telling you, by the time you were mind, you're going to be fucking golden. And then I was like, you can go to California twice a month if you want and still save money. Yeah.

In that situation. So I feel like my whole, my advice to people is they get older is like, it's easy for me to say, I like to go off my, I had a great 20s, but I eventually learned, I mean, I was always very wide with money and prudent and all that. But I wish I made this move much quicker because there was no reason not to other than paying someone else. It's mortgage and like, you know, to whatever.

It was just, you know, it's just, it's just strange. So, but you guys are younger and I look at my sons. I, I see glimmers in my own eye and my own past. So I wish you guys the best in your own endeavors.

And I do want to throw this little piece of information into the works here. Nathan Favreau wrote in, this is unexpected. He says, Hey, Colin, I saw on Twitter, you have a new workout bench. Are you planning on taking your workouts to the next level?

Should we repair ourselves for a new swole column? So I'm now, I obsessively do my cardio workout every day to maintain my weight. But then I bought a weight table and just to like, I don't know what you would call it, my modular 50 pound weights or you could go dumbbell down off in the router. And I can't lift.

You know, I can't like, you know, with around 50 pounds, probably like more than once. But I have them each like 15 or 20 pounds and I'm doing like different kinds of workouts with them. For the first time I've ever, I've never weight trained in any regard in my entire life. And so yes, I plan on giving you a new swole column for no other reason than I can do it.

For no other reason. Then I'm gonna, I feel like so powerful right now. After only a few days, I feel like I can punch right through the screen, punch Dustin right in his gullet. You know what I mean?

Gullet. Yeah, that's a fatal area to be punched. You wouldn't even know what you mean. No, that's how powerful I go right now.

No. I wanted to remind everyone, Ratchet & Clank is still free and now runs 60 frames a second. We're gonna talk about it in a little while, but it runs on 60 frames on PS5. Not the alma-read in once.

It says it's completely wild that some people on Twitter still don't know. Ratchet & Clank is free. How is it that people who supposedly own PlayStation consoles and are invested in this ecosystem don't know when free content is available? Is it Sony's marketing?

Is it because these deals only advertise maybe once? It just does not make any sense. Anyways, thanks for all that you guys do. So again, Ratchet is free.

They did just release a 60 frames on PS5, Patrick's unfortunate for me because I just platinum the game. So fuck me. But I feel like Chris, the reason people don't know is because I've ever used the PlayStation store before. Can you find anything you're looking for on the PlayStation store without literally searching for the specific name?

I don't even know what's going on in the PS5 PlayStation store. It's like, you kind of settle into it a little bit, but it's so... There's too many layers. That's the problem with PS5.

There are too many layers. And so it's not a huge surprise to me that people don't know that Ratchet is free. It's a bit obtuse, like the way it's designed. It feels like there's like a...

There's like little nest eggs of like specific content, but you have to know exactly what you're... You have to know literally exactly what you're looking for, and then you gotta find what Sony thinks that means. It's very bizarre. I was looking for Oddworld.

And I thought it would be like in like, oh, up and coming, and it's like, oh, it's not. Or just announced or recently released or upcoming. And it's just not. I just had to search Oddworld.

And I was just like, all right, now I found it. And it wasn't even the first result on the PS5 store. So it's like, I don't... It's a mess, man.

They definitely don't integrate their announcements well into the UI. And in fairness, I don't know if any platform particularly does this well. I find myself being consistently out of the loop every time I log into anything. In fact, the only things that I feel like are good about it are video games themselves.

Like, whenever you log onto Destiny or like something, it's like some pop-up being like, this is free. This is a new thing. Have you done this? And it's like, okay.

I'm thinking something. I can play it about that with the division recently too, where it's... It's overwhelming. Maybe not want to play the game.

I'm like, I really amped up to get back into the division. I don't want to fucking do this. So go check it out. We'll talk about Ratchet in a moment.

I want to hold that thought though. Yeah. Just a few more small pieces of news here. PAX East, cancelled, officially.

Frankly, fuck them. I don't care. But PAX Online is running July 15th through 18th. If you're interested in that, Tokyo Game Show also cancelled this year.

That usually happens in September in Tokyo or outside Tokyo. And the Tokyo Game Show online is still happening. That event will be September 30th to October 3rd. There is a weird...

I didn't know how to talk about this, but Cooking Mama Cookstar. Do you guys remember the saga around this game? So this game was substantial for some reason because it was going to be the first Cooking Mama game that came to PlayStation. Obviously, this is a kind of a more modest and casual title for DS and Wii and all this kind of stuff.

So it's substantial because it was going to come to PlayStation. But then you guys might recall that even when it came to Switch, it was like some unauthorized thing and then it was taken down and it wasn't for sale for a while. And all this weird shit happened and then the company that owns Cooking Mama was like, you have no permission to even put the game on PlayStation. And it was this whole people can go read about it.

And then, out of nowhere, the game just appeared on PlayStation Network a couple days ago. No press release, nothing, anywhere. The game just appeared, the trophy's appeared, it's for sale right now, Cooking Mama Cookstar. So after all the lawsuits and weird kind of stuff, it just kind of did a shit it out.

So if you guys remember that saga, which was weird, then you'll be glad to know the game's available for you. I can't believe that was a year ago. Yeah. That's insane.

What the hell is going on? We're dying. Yeah. Yes.

And also I wanted to bring attention to a story that we make fun of Kotaku all the time, which is, you know, the Deservement. But there is an interview on Kotaku that was conducted around dreams and media molecules. And these guys are getting a lot of, a lot of attention lately. We talked about Shivan Reddy getting, who's the director of the studio getting, a BAFTA Fellowship, which is a huge deal.

There's only 11 people in games that have ever gotten one. And they also did an interview with Abby Hep, who's used to work at Respawn and is their, I guess, live product lead, but she's the community manager and stuff. And so it gets a little bit of insight if you guys are interested because we're really hard on dreams. It gives a little bit of insight into what's going on at that studio and what they're trying to do and all that.

But I must also criticize the article because it does not get into the meat and the grit of who is playing this game, how many people are playing it because they're always talking about what people are doing in the game and how people are enjoying it. But they never, I don't know if it's because the journalists didn't get the answer. They didn't ask the questions, but it doesn't quite get to the meat. But we're starting to get a better idea of what's going on in the studio and I feel like this is an important piece of the puzzle.

So I wanted to recommend it. And finally, before we get into what we're playing, Mom's like me wrote in and said, would you eat someone else's booger for $1,000 of Dustin? There needs to be more information. Do we know the origin of the booger?

A nose? Who's nose? Well, yeah, someone else's booger. So my vision for this is that you just are presented a booger that is a Norse.

Yeah, it's like on a plate. All you're told is that it's human. Yeah, like a plate, right? Like a small plate of booger.

Yeah. You're said, all you're told is this is a human booger from someone from someone's nose. There's a wide variety of types. That's true.

It might be dry, a little crispy. It might be a do you want it that way? Oh, dude, you practically just inhaled that. You wouldn't even notice.

Right. And then honestly, if it's like that, then $1,000, I mean, maybe, I don't know. I don't know if I could truly make this decision until it was presented in front of me. I'm saying that nine times, 99 out of 100 times, I would say no.

Right. If it's real small and it's just a tiny little boy, like I said, you could breathe it. That's the thing too. It's like you don't even know the size of it.

This thing could be like a hulking, you know, this thing could be uniquely enormous, you know, for all, you know, I wouldn't do it for $1,000. I don't know if there's a price that limits, it would have to be several hundreds of thousands. Really? For me, the hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Yes. Yes. Wow. I'm a little bit surprised that you guys, I don't know if it's the right word, but I'm almost a prudishness because if you just gave me like a T-saucer with someone's booger on it and you're like, I'm gonna give you $1,000 cash to eat that.

I mean, that would be better. I mean, I'm gonna be like, I mean, I better. $1,000. I mean, I'm not hard up.

You're gonna give me $1,000. It's like, okay, I don't take a fucking $1,000. That's, you know, I'll put that, I'll just go buy a five year CD with $1,000. I'll have you $1,000 in $50 in five years.

Like if somebody came to me, it's like, would you do this heinous thing for $1,000? I could just make a shirt that says, I did this for $1,000. Whatever heinous activity is and probably just make that money and like, raise awareness of the brand, you know? So like to me, it's like, if I can just find an easy way to make that money without doing the thing, I would just rather just do that, you know?

Unless we're talking like literally hundreds of, because that's like harder to come by, obviously, because it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. In which case, yeah, maybe I would have to get a good look at it. Yeah, you need a benefactor. Like who's the benefactor, right?

I mean, I'm thinking of also, I guess it's a little heinous because it's like, okay, you would eat, I would eat a booger for $1,000, but would you therefore eat, if you had to get a booger for $1,000, would you eat a hundred boogers to get $100,000 and the only way you can get them was to eat a hundred boogers? See, that's when it gets a little crazier and I don't know. I don't know. I'd like to think that I'd do almost anything legal for money.

Right. That's fair. What? Say what you need to say, Dustin?

I'm just saying that this concept of the hundred boogers for a hundred thousand is on my mind now, because that's like changing money right there. Right. You just suffer for that, for what? How long would it take you to realistically a hundred, like, like, you would have to, you would have to, like, you know, like when you have crumbs on the plate and you want them so you have to gather them and like, you know, you have to do that and you got to, you know, and you got to just scoop it in and eat them.

I think there's a big factor here too, is that like, this is a human booger in the middle of a pandemic. That's why I said you might very well die from this. That's true. And I just have a thousand dollars that's just going right to some insurance company.

You want to house this until you fucking pass away into the fucking ether because you ate a booger for a grand. Chris, you ruined my idea. Because I was going to say, if we're doing a hundred booger as I was like, you could just like make a mega booger just like, that's worse. No, then you just, you don't have to do it like an orange water.

Look, you know, put it back. I think you're estimating the size of a hundred boogers. That is a good question. That is potentially like an orange.

Oh my God. And some of them can be bloody, you know. Yeah, like don't know. Here's the thing.

I want to be very clear. You don't know the consistency of the booger. You don't know the person's COVID status or other disease status. You know, way worse things out there than COVID you can get from someone's not.

That's true. Roll the dice. Roll the dice, my friends. But here's the thing, the hundred boogers for a hundred thousand dollars, this is the whole beef versus like, you know, like when they say like you're more likely to get a beef-borne illness from, shot meat than you are from a piece of steak because it's only one cow as opposed to many.

So you're increasing the likelihood that you're going to make more money, but you're also increasing the likelihood of your exposure. So it's all, it's like a game and deal or no deal. But instead of beautiful women with suitcases, you're even boogers off of a tea plate. Someone is vomiting in their car right now.

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We'll get to our plan. Chris, we'll start with you because you're the easy one here this week. It says you were a confusing thought-odd world came out today. Of course, you foolish son of a bitch who comes out next week.

I know. I was so sad because I was like, I have a lot of work to do and obviously nothing other places are speaking to me right now. I don't have that much of a poll to go into the backlog. But I remember either on the show or on Twitter I saw something like, oh, Oddworld is free for April.

So for whatever reason, I just didn't think about it much and I was like, oh, that must be April 1st, like the same, you know, whenever the month flips over. I just assumed. And I was a damn fool because I woke up early today excited to play Oddworld. And I was like, it's coming out in five days.

You idiot. And I was like, all right, well, and I was just looking through all the other games I was playing. I was like, I've already talked about all these already. There's not much I can say other than like anything I've already said.

So I'm still playing some stuff. I'm still playing like, I'm actually jumping back. For some reason I stopped to shadow the Colossus remake at the final Colossus. So I'm like, I'm going to just like knock that out.

Because that spinal colossus is not fun. That probably is a part of a big part of the reason. It's not that I don't think it's not fun. It's definitely not as interesting as the other colossi or colossuses.

Yeah, colossi. Yeah. I just stopped because I thought I proved myself like this. Yeah, but I should just finish it.

But other than that, I've been waiting for Oddworld because that's the one I really want to make space in my mind for and stick my teeth into. Because I know it's like one of those games. I love Oddworld, but it's also that's a genre of game that I'm not necessarily super into nowadays. Like the whole non-combat oriented 2D.

I love combat and fast and frenetic gameplay. So even though I do Oddworld, I can tell it's going to be a little bit of an acclimation game. So I'm trying to free my mental, my mental, plainscape so I can get used to it. You're banned with.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not really freeing yourself. You can get Mikael Gorbachev on the red phone behind you and you guys can talk about all sorts of interesting things while you're waiting for Oddworld to come out. I wonder if he's a fan.

I don't know. He gives a shit. Dustin, what are you playing? So this is not a PlayStation game, but it was so unique.

I have to imagine it's going to come to PlayStation. That is Fazmaphobia. This has been a hit on Twitch. It's such a unique game.

I've never played anything like it. Your ghost hunters, you go into a location and your goal is to figure out what type of ghost is there. And so you have all these different instruments. So it's almost like it's like, okay, the ghost isn't reacting to this tool.

So it can't be this. The work is really unique in that it uses voice recognition too. And so you can talk to the ghost. It'll give you the name of the ghost.

And so you'll be like, Jerry, are you there? And then something might move in the room. You have five minutes. And then after that, the ghost gets aggroed and starts hunting people.

So a pretty interesting gameplay dynamics in this game. I have to imagine with its success on Twitch and on Steam that they're eventually going to release this on PlayStation. It's definitely very early access. But I've never played anything quite like it.

So I had to shout it out. It's an interesting game. If you have a lower end PC, I'm imagining you'd be able to play it. But pretty neat.

And I checked out the Ratchet and Clank 60 FPS update. I was going to, I was like, let me just test the waters. Maybe I will do a full playthrough again before the new game comes out. And guys, it's very good.

It is, it just feels like how it was supposed to feel super smooth. It just, I always, I tell people this and I know it doesn't ring true for everybody, but I sincerely believe that because of the responsiveness you get from higher frame rate in 60 FPS, I think it makes games more fun. Like they feel more fun to play. And that I felt that when I was checking out this Ratchet and Clank update.

So it's available if you have a PlayStation 5, available now, which is weird because when they announced it, they said sometime in April and then literally the next day they said, here it is, just shout it out for you. It's like an old fashioned Sony organization. Yeah. You definitely wouldn't have that patch ready when you made the game free.

No. You would want to get a bunch of people to play and then, and then announce the patch a month later. So when people go and they went and play it, even though they're appreciative of the free game, they're like, well, why did you not just tell me to wait? It is weird.

I don't know. Very strange indeed. Dustin, I'm a little surprised you didn't put another game in here because I thought I saw that you were streaming Outriders. And I wanted to ask you about this game.

We actually had a letter from the audience and I didn't include it because they were asking if anyone's were playing it. So sorry out there to you. But I wanted to get, I was very curious about your take on it specifically because I heard it could be a game I can play by myself. And I heard that it was, Micah was saying that she had read that it was very geared for like, which is very attractive to me.

Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about this game from your experience because I thought you wouldn't have been streaming it. Oh, so that was Maddie and I attempted. We attempted, but we had cross play just did not work.

Oh, which I do have to properly disclose per my providing the code was from Square Enix dudes for ham radio related. Yeah, we don't request codes on the show. Right. Yeah.

So that was all ham radio related to be clear, but it was provided by Square Enix. But I didn't put it on here because my impression of the game is not fair to it because I had such a horrible experience just trying to play it yesterday, which maybe that is worth sharing is that the cross play did not work at all. I was on PC and Maddie was on series X and we could not get it to work. But Colin, I actually do now that you mentioned, I actually think this would be a game that is completely up your alley and that very Gears of War S, you can see a lot of that DNA since I believe people can fly made.

They made judgment. Yeah. Yeah. So there's like exploding headshots and stuff like that and the running when you run from cover to cover.

But and it has that that looter shooter, the Schluter aspect to it that you also like and power the powers are pretty cool too. Like I'm I pick the the pyro the pyromancer and so like you can like bring up walls of flames and then like catch people on fire. They shoot up in the air and explode. Yeah, I think I'm going to check it out because I just I was making fun of so Mike and I were just going through the PlayStation store trying to navigate see what's out and you know, marvel at the nothingness that's coming to PlayStation 5.

But and by the way, just a quick, I'm really griping today, but it's a great, great episode. I'm just letting you know, I go to the PlayStation store and look at like what's the more than the releases and then shows you an entire like 20 selections of pre-orders before it even shows you like what the games are. And it's like, oh, this is just announced, but now it's out and this was just announced, but it's a pre-order and I don't understand what's going on in the store. But I went and I watched some of the trailers and I was making fun of it because it really is corny as shit like the whole like they're like got their backs to each other and it's like this whole, I just can't stand like the same thing.

It's the same, these indistinguishable video game pieces that come in and out, but the gameplay was really fun and that's all I really care about. So I think I'm going to check it out. Although I am distracted right now by Wild Arms 3, which I announced last week, I was playing Wild Arms 3 is a 2003 PlayStation 2 role playing game. I'm playing it because as people remember, there was a time when Sony was trying to mess around with the idea of bringing some of their classic games to PlayStation 4.

So I'm playing it and I, you know when you get far in a game, you're like, I've given the game so much, I kind of thought this was Dragon Quest 11. Oh, I don't want to compare them because I actually do like Dragon Quest 11. You get so far into a game and you're like, all right, well I've come this far. And then that becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because you start realizing like, oh, now I've given this game 40 hours and now I'm 40 hours away from you.

And so I'm getting more and more trapped in this game and it just is so tedious and yet I just won't stop playing it. I play it every day trying to get further and further into it. And every time I play it, I'm just like, I just wrote down some things here. The grinding is weird.

I love grinding role playing games, but the grinding is really unsatisfying. The writing is really bad. The translations are super strange and this is weird because Wild Arms 3 is weird. The games one and two are both well written and well translated.

And you know, I have a really hard time when games introduce new mechanics like halfway through a game. They do this in a really bad way. They introduce like this tank that you have to like upgrade and drive around the map and I'm like, what the fuck is going on like playing like Blaster Master or something. And then I just wrote like the Dungeons all feel the same, the cameras too tight on the characters, the equipment systems boring, it's vague.

And it exemplifies, the reason I wanted to say that is because it exemplifies why I don't like PlayStation 2 role playing games. It just, there's something about this era that seems so gray and boring and drab and monotonous to me. And Wild Arms 3 sadly, I want to see it through the end. In fact, I'm going to plan in this game.

I had respect to media vision developers. I do love media vision, but I don't, I remember, and I think I said this last week that I was kind of quickly recalling why I played, I didn't beat this game when I was a kid. I came out when I was a freshman in college. I remembered why I was like, I used to very quickly put games down all the time when I was a young fan.

It didn't speak to me. So I'm playing, I don't recommend it. I would love to hear from people that have played it in the past like what you might like about it because what I was surprised was I don't know. It's like in the mid to high 70s.

It's not, it's not ill received and I don't understand. I don't get it. So I might get into the Outriders and I kind of like in tandem with this game because there's still not much else to play until, you know, we're in Returnal Month now. So we're only, we're only a few weeks away, which is exciting.

All right. So I said that this was going to be a grippy episode and it's going to be and it already has been because of a major piece of news that we've talked about in the past, but has been confirmed. So let's jump right into this and talk. Number one, the rumors are true.

Sony is shutting down the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita and eliminating any legacy store access PlayStation Portable had as well. As first reported last week by website, the gamer, which accurately noted the store closures would happen this summer, Sony sent both developers and players alike letters announcing the news. Here's the essential information. On July 2nd, the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3 will be taken offline.

It was first put online in November of 2006 and will have run continuously for 15 years. PSP's PlayStation Store will also be taken down at this point though Sony has quickly pointed out rightly so that PSP's version of the PlayStation Store was ostensibly neutered back in 2016. So this isn't huge news. Perhaps the biggest and saddest piece of news of all, however, is that on August 27th, the PlayStation Vita's PlayStation Store will go offline.

First opened in December of 2011 to be the storefront will be killed just shy of its decade mark. Up to these respective dates, you can purchase anything you want on these versions of the PlayStation Store, and you will have access to them later so you can re-download games you already own even after those dates come and go. You will simply be stopped from buying anything beginning July 2nd on PSP and August 27th on Vita. Sony hasn't commented or I'm sorry, committed to how long we'll be able to download what we purchased though.

It's fairly safe to assume that this functionality will exist in perpetuity. On the development side, if you're curious, we got separate letters that outline some more information. PlayStation 3 content must be submitted to Sony by May 24th and must be published to the store by June 1st. Vita content must be submitted by July 12th.

They can be purchased no later than July 20th. I'll publish them, sorry, no later than July 20th. Dustin, how are you feeling? Well, last week we talked about this.

And I think the overall take was, this is definitely going to happen, but there's no way Sony would be this irresponsible and do it this soon. Well, here we are. And Sony, I mean, here's the thing guys, we always are like, Sony wouldn't do that, but Sony does have a record of doing things like that, but we just tell ourselves, it's like they couldn't possibly do that. And here we are.

And yeah, it's a difficult thing to navigate in that I get it, especially with PS3 and PSP. I'm very at peace with that because in some ways I'm like, yeah, you can't keep these stores open forever. Obviously, we'd like a backwards compatibility solution instead, but it's clear that Sony's not interested in that. I think the bigger below, as you mentioned, Colin, is the Vita, especially, and I'll let you get into this, but the fact that they did not tell anyone who's working on Vita games that this was happening.

And that is just simply unacceptable because this goes beyond Lilymo. There are other teams that we've seen articles laid out throughout this week of people talking about the developers that are working on Vita games that are just shit out of luck now, any money or time or whatever, which time is money in development, that even bested is just gone. They, you know, Sony, they do not give a fuck. It's done.

It's over. So it should have been more time, clearly. But yeah. How do you feel, Chris?

It's wildly responsible. Like it's just it speaks to, um, this is, I don't know if negligence or incompetence or what, but this is like insane. Like even when we were talking about like, oh yeah, you know, this is definitely going to happen. These stores are not going to remain online in perpetuity.

I'm personally astounded that the PlayStation 3 is even still functional as far as like a downloading, as far as downloading games goes, you know, but the fact that they didn't at least give like, I think what I said last week was like, at least a year, you know, you know, you're going to tell people a year and if you were going to do it on July 2nd or August, then you should have said this in August or July of last year. And I think more people would have been okay with that. The fact that it's just so close, like this is April. April, like we're not that far off from these days or from these, these, um, shutdown dates.

And I think it's just, um, I mean, you say it's like it's safe to assume that this functionality will exist in perpetuity, the ability to download your games that you've already purchased. But like, honestly, this one, like, I don't know, I have no idea because like, I mean, that is an assumption, my assumption is simply based on attrition, right? Like, right. It's safer at this point after they take the stores offline to be like, we'll just wait you because you're, none of you are going to have a working console soon.

Right. It's just not going to even, yeah, yeah. That's, that's the thing. It's like eventually, eventually it will stop.

And eventually, like, I mean, most PSPs are have naturally exploded by now. So like the fact that they've even kept the PSP store open this long, even if it is, even if it wasn't neutered in 2016, I don't know, man, this is a just really, I want to say shocking, but it kind of isn't, you know, like the way that they handled it. There's a lot to be said about this. And I'm sorry to people that are watching the show.

The sun keeps coming in and out. So I keep messing with the exposure on my camera. I don't even know if that comes through or not, but like I'll make it brighter right now. See, it's not nice.

I think the best way to organize this conversation and make sure we don't leave anything out is I just took a bunch of inquiries from the audience. And of course you guys can write in one of your perks on Patreon, patreon.com slash last immediate is the ability to submit inquiries to the show. We read a bunch of them each episode. So let's start with Duncan Leishman.

He says, Hey, chaps, what do you think the real reason is that Sony doesn't appear to be actively pursuing backwards compatibility or care about game preservation? It's got to be financial, right? Surely they can afford it, but maybe they think it would be, or not be profitable enough. But they possibly be working on it and will reveal it and whenever they take on Game Pass is with their game pass, even be considered a success if they announced it without the back catalog at least their first party game.

So you're getting a little lost in the weeds here, but we'll try to talk about this in the most logical way that we possibly can, which is because again, I'm sick of talking about game pass and I'm sick of talking about PlayStation now. And I'm also sick of people comparing them like Sony has the answer to Game Pass and PlayStation now, which again, we've established just not the same thing. Okay. How many games are on it if you have to stream them?

I don't give a shit. Right. So let's start here, Chris. Do you think that Sony is going to have a solution that will allow us to access these stores in some sort of legacy way, one day, whether to kind of bring these games forward and repurchase them or to access them, like I said, by having a license and then maybe we'll download it with some emulator or something.

What do you think about how they're working this? I would like that, but I just don't think I don't think that's happening. I think if that was happening, that would be the way they would have announced this, or at least they would have maybe teased if that was really something that was in the near future. I feel like it would be something like, Hey, you know, we're shutting down these stores, but they would probably tease something, tease some kind of silver lining to it.

If there was any kind of plan that this would play into like some kind of, Hey, you're still going to be able to play resistance too soon, natively on your PS5. I don't think that's going to be happening. Quite honestly, I don't know if you know, maybe getting backwards compatibility running is insanely expensive and it is something that like Microsoft is uniquely able to do because they're just made of money literally. Maybe that is true.

I have no idea how any of this works. I'm not a cloud engineer. You know, I don't know how any of this stuff works, but you know, I also want to say that game pass is not backwards compatibility. I don't think it's fair to bring up game pass and in conversations about backwards compatibility because that's not really the point of game pass.

Xbox did backwards compatibility through firmware and software engineering. It's impressive. It's not game pass. I think it's weird to bring it up.

I agree, but it actually is also makes Microsoft's case against someone even more, I think, that is actually a totally separate thing that has nothing to do with game pass that is also an option that is not awesome. Right. Yeah, I know exactly. I mean, I'm not saying it's better for Sony that it's not a product game pass.

I'm just saying it's like people are conflating things. Game pass is not backwards compatibility. Game pass is just like a subscription service. But yeah, I don't see this being solved anytime soon.

I think I was not even enough to think they would have solved it for launch. Like at least some part of me was like, oh, they're probably going to have, they got to have some solution. But I just, I, my faith in Sony as far as anything legacy oriented or backwards compatibility oriented is satisfactorily withered to a point where it's just not there. I feel like when the rumor happened, the reason I didn't trust it completely, not that it was wrong about what was going to happen, but that the timing might have been off was just because I was like, well, would they really announce something without having something else in place because it's such a bad optical thing for them to do, even if it doesn't hurt their bottom line and it doesn't seem like we talked about that in a little while.

This is really hurt them. It's probably not, but I think the longer term issues are deleterious PlayStation as a brand because they seem less concerned about their older games and that's a problem for them. So I'm wondering, Dustin, like, what do you think about this question of Sony having something planned? Because I think, I guess that's why I can put it is the longer they stayed quiet after the rumor came out.

Remember we established that they often just say we don't comment on rumors and speculation. Well, they never said anything. And to me, I was like, well, this is strange because why wouldn't they clarify it? Why wouldn't they at least say that usual term and the longer the silence, you know, like after a court case when the longer it takes a jury to come back, the better.

I think it is for the defense or whatever. And so like you start to like read certain things into this like the silence and I was starting to read into it like, what is going on with these guys? Why are they remaining so quiet? Are they planning something and trying to get their eggs and you know, their ducks in a row?

And it wasn't so. So my now my faith in them having some sort of solution to this is maybe more minimal than it was, but I still feel like they have that they still have to solve the problem of backwards and patability access or these things are just dead. Like these platforms are just are dead. And I don't feel like that's acceptable.

What do you think? So someone in our one of our patrons on discord wrote something I don't read a snippet of because it brought a really unique perspective about this idea of caring about legacy. This is from one of our users, Takoyaki. He said, in Japan in terms of media, movies, music, games, whatever, if anything is like four to five years old, it's considered extremely old in Japan and watching, listening or playing old games is considered abhorrently disgusting and just overall unattractive to Japanese people.

I'm from Japan, but naturalized in the States and have been around American culture long enough. And I do wish to play old games legally as well. But when I go to Japan and listen to aero Smith songs or what movies that are more than five years old, I constantly get content for consuming said media. My friends and family constantly shout at me saying, that's too old.

I'm not being able to move on or why are you playing that old ass game? Are you okay in the head? To Japanese consuming old media gives very, very strong vibes of not being able to move on stuck in the past or you're possibly mentally ill or something. I remember I was on Japan Twitter a while back and tweeting Japanese saying that I was watching the dark night again, only to be followed by replies from strangers consisting of too old or WTF man move on.